This paper seeks to redress the marginalization of Adorno in environmental philosophical discourse. Kate Soper describes two opposing ways of conceiving nature. There is the redemptive “nature-endorsing” paradigm that lays claim to the intrinsic value or “otherness” of nature. Conversely, the “nature-sceptical” approach denies that we can access originary, untouched nature. This paper argues that the significance of Adorno’s treatment of natural beauty lies in how he brings these approaches together. In writings that resonate with the dual connotations of Sebald’s (...) phrase “after nature”, Adorno both affirms the skeptical point that we cannot transcend a human history alienated from nature as well as retaining redemptive hope wherein art “after” nature seeks creative possibilities from out of the very ruins of history marked by nature’s destruction. (shrink)

For Friedrich Hölderlin, the mediatory role of aesthetics was central to overcoming the challenges of modern life, in particular human beings’ antagonistic relationship to nature. This article claims that Hölderlin preserves and improves what is true in Kant’s conception of the beautiful: that the experience of beauty concerns recognizing our dependence on nature, and that this recognition resonates in the works of artistic geniality as well. The article furthermore argues that the twentieth-century philosopher Theodor W. Adorno’s interpretation of Hölderlin sheds (...) light on how Hölderlin’s late poetry constitutes a remembrance of nature that avoids fetishizing nature as an origin to which we should return, while still allowing for an acknowledgment of its priority. Hölderlin’s poetry, as a work of spirit or mind, is exemplary in its commemoration of the precondition for spirit’s achievements: finite, empirical life. In this way, the self-reflectivity of Hölderlin’s poems also constitute a corrective to subjectivist tendencies that still reverberate in post-Kantian idealism. (shrink)

When it comes to the relationship between art and nature, research on Adorno’s aesthetics usually centres on his discussion of Kant and Hegel. While this reflects Adorno’s own position – his comprehension of this relationship is to a large extent developed through a critical re-reading of both the Kantian and the Hegelian position – I argue that we are able to gain important insights into Adorno’s aesthetics and the central art–nature relation by reading his ideas in the light of Schelling’s (...) conception of this relationship. The article focuses on the similarities between Schelling’s notion of nature’s productivity and Adorno’s understanding of natural beauty. It concludes with a discussion on Adorno’s re-evaluation of the reconciliatory power of the exemplary unity of the artwork in conjunction with Schelling’s comparison between artwork and organism, as well as his concept of the construction of nature. (shrink)

While Theodor Adorno is known for his philosophical reconstruction of aesthetic modernism, he also analyzes—and is critical of—the demotion of natural beauty in the hierarchy of aesthetic concerns following Kant. Recent scholars have acknowledged that natural beauty is important in Adornian aesthetics, but many do so in a manner that repeats the subordination of natural beauty and the aesthetic experience of nature to that of art. Against this tendency, in this article I demonstrate that not only does Adorno contest the (...) inferiority of the aesthetic experience of nature but his unconventional description and theoretical articulation of natural beauty is especially pertinent for our time of climate crisis. By unpacking his endorsement of Walter Benjamin's casting both nature and history in terms of transience, I argue that Adorno proposes an experience of natural beauty that is expressive of social historical content, offers a vision of a different relationship with nature, and discloses ethical claims on us to act in this world. (shrink)